INDIANAPOLIS -- It is the grandest and most famous automobile racecourse on the planet, a place so imposing that it defines the city that surrounds it. Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a place for greatness, for heroics, for the kind of feats that make history and win championships. This 99-year-old track is extraordinary not only because of its longevity, but because of the magnitude of the events that have unfolded upon its 2.5-mile surface.

That's why people come here, hundreds of thousands of them, even though you can't see all the way across the racetrack and the facility's narrow straightaways don't always make for the best action. They come to be a part of something momentous -- and not witness an event like the one that unfolded Sunday, when the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard slowly and painfully disintegrated like so many Goodyear tires rubbed down to the bare cords.

It was a difficult thing to watch, like the sight of a once-great athlete disabled by a crippling disease. There were six competition cautions and a speedway-record 52 caution laps as NASCAR slowed the race about every 20 laps so teams could change tires that were rapidly turning to black dust. It progressed in fits and starts, like heat races in a World of Outlaws event. Everything came down to track position and pit stops, with Jimmie Johnson claiming his second Brickyard title after winning a seven-lap shootout in the end. By then, the victor seemed almost incidental to all the chaos that had preceded him.

"That wasn't a race [Sunday]. It's ridiculous," said Indiana native Ryan Newman. "That's a lack of preparation from NASCAR to Goodyear to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to put on a show like they did for the fans [Sunday]. It's disrespectful to the fans, and I wish that it didn't have to be that way. That's not the way NASCAR racing is supposed to be."

Especially at Indianapolis, this nation's holiest house of speed. A debacle like the one that unfolded Sunday shouldn't happen anywhere. But it cannot -- absolutely cannot -- occur at Indianapolis, by any account the second-most important event on the Sprint Cup schedule, a big-money, high-profile race some would rank right next to the Daytona 500 in terms of prestige. Sunday was akin to the Sugar Bowl being delayed because nobody could find a football, the Final Four being held on a too-slippery basketball court, the PGA Championship being contested on greens that were tearing up -- exactly what occurred in 1995 at Riviera Country Club, a venue the PGA of America hasn't returned to since.

Such things are not supposed to happen; can't happen, without a tremendous amount of embarrassment being suffered by all the parties involved. Welcome to Sunday, when NASCAR did everything in its power to prevent the Brickyard from becoming a dangerous crash-fest, sacrificing one of its crown jewels for the sake of its competitors. Give them a little credit -- when something not too dissimilar happened prior to a Formula One race at Indianapolis in 2005, all but six teams refused to start. Two years later, F1 was gone. At least NASCAR went through with the show, even though there wasn't much to watch.

"It was bad. It was actually embarrassing, it really was," Matt Kenseth said. "I apologize to the fans. You can't really blame NASCAR. After [Saturday's final practice], we knew this was probably how it was going to be. We knew it wasn't going to get any better. We knew we could only run about seven or eight laps on the tires. I don't know what they could have done differently."

Yes, Sunday was a lost cause from the very beginning, too bad for the more than 200,000 fans who paid good money to sit through a hot and ultimately unfulfilling afternoon. To find fault in this case you have to go back to April, when Kurt Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Brian Vickers took part in a three-day tire test of the new car at Indianapolis. Even then, they were "going through [tires] in six laps," Tony Eury Jr., Earnhardt's crew chief, said Sunday. The ultimate decision -- and who made it isn't exactly clear -- was that with more cars on the racetrack, more rubber would be ground into the racing surface, and tire wear would improve over the course of the event weekend.

“

NASCAR did everything right [Sunday]. But when that's happening at the test, you can't say, 'Well, it will get better.' That can't happen anytime.

”

DALE EARNHARDT JR.

That's what usually happens at Indianapolis. That's what didn't happen Sunday.

"We did what was right [Sunday]," Earnhardt said. "NASCAR did everything right [Sunday]. But when that's happening at the test, you can't say, 'Well, it will get better.' That can't happen anytime. I don't care if it's one car on the racetrack testing, that can't never happen. You can't sit there and go, 'Well, you get everybody here to do it, it will go away.' That ain't good enough. That's still dangerous even if it's one cat out here testing."

Earnhardt wasn't alone in that sentiment. "I'm just shocked they did a tire test here, and this is what they ended up with," Jamie McMurray said. The next time Goodyear holds a tire test, Kasey Kahne added, "they should probably learn something from it instead of bringing us back on something you can't race on."

Sunday brought back unfortunate memories of 2005, when the tire Goodyear brought to the May race on the recently smoothed surface at Lowe's Motor Speedway contributed to a series-record 22 cautions. The tire manufacturer brought the exact same compound back for that year's October's race at Charlotte, and the resulting 15 cautions led NASCAR to consider even the drastic step of ending the event early. Kevin Harvick called it "the biggest joke in racing." Now it's been joined by the unlikeliest of company -- the mighty, revered and respected Brickyard.

"I know at Charlotte you had to be careful," Jeff Gordon said. "You couldn't push too hard. But we could go a lot more laps than we could go here [Sunday]. I've never seen anything like this."

This, said plainly, should never have happened. The Brickyard is too big an event to be undone by assumption and theory. Teams have almost a month to prepare for the Daytona 500; they had all of four hours of practice time to prep for Indianapolis. Bet on there being a full-field test next season at Indianapolis, an absolutely necessity if the new car is to race here for years to come. The drivers deserve it. The teams deserve it. And the fans deserve it, rather than apologies over what this venerable event devolved into on Sunday.

"I've got to stop and just apologize to the fans," Vickers said. "We've got some awesome, awesome fans that come out here and watch these races. I don't want to point a finger at anybody. It's a culmination of a lot of things that took place [Sunday] that caused the problem we're seeing with the tires. We as a sport should have done better. I'm embarrassed. I'm sure a lot of people are."

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.

Also
• Out of final pit first, Johnson wins Brickyard 'competition'
• NASCAR, Goodyear determined to get to cause of trouble